Dear The West,
I’m being asked ridiculous questions by young, educated Western population.
“Why aren’t you wearing the Hijab?”
“How come you go to school?”
“How come you are allowed to work?”
“Do you really drive to work/school? You don’t ride camels?”
“Are you allowed to go out back home like that (wearing shorts)?”
“What do you mean you got married in your thirties? Shouldn’t you guys get married at the age of nine?”
An endless list of bizarre, unreal questions that make me expect the following would be something like: “Where’s the collar round your neck?”, “You live in a house, not a dungeon?”, “Show me the branding on your butt.”
If this is how an educated, average person in the West thinks, then I don’t blame the rest of the uneducated population whose backyard is the furthest they’ve visited. I will not even justify those with an answer.
Dear The West,
I turn on the radio and browse the tens of stations we have, and all that invades my ears are Pop, Rock, Spiritual, Country and Latin. What? No Arabic music?
According to the Census Bureau, Arabs count to 3.6 million in the US. That’s a million less than the population of Ireland, and a million more than the population of Slovenia. That’s a lot of people. True, they don’t compete with the 53 million Latinos in the country but that’s still a significant number. And not a single Arabic speaking radio station. Honestly, I feel sorry for the West for not waking up to Feiruz’s angelic voice, that smells like crispy air, dew drops on petals and fresh bakery over a morning coffee in a porcelain cup, or Warda’s warm melodies, golden vocals, dulcet music on a rainy afternoon, or The Lady Umm Kulthoum’s grandeur, orchestral cadence, wondrous power and heart healing abilities to make one go back in time and fix all broken pasts, or at least mitigate them.
The Western audience enjoy a number of musical hits, oblivious to the fact that they were ripped off from Arabic music. Jay Z helped himself to one renowned Arabic song in his hit, Big Pimpin’. In fact, they were numerous legal cases scored back and forth between the rapper and the family of late Abdel Halim, whose song, Khosara, has been the feature tune of the song. Jean Francois Micheal, the French singer, used the tune of Feiruz’s Habbaytak Bel Saif in his 2000, Coupable. Don’t Know What To Tell Ya. This is not a statement, it’s a song released on 2001 by Aaliyah based on Warda’s Batwanes Beek. And because Feiruz’s music, composed mainly by the Lebanese brothers, Mansour and Assi Rahbani, is legendary, Madonna wanted a piece of the cake by slicing yet another Feiruz’s, Today He Was Hung Up On A Cross, and pasting it to her Erotica. Ironic how a religious song celebrating Christ is transformed into a sex melody, but Madonna is capable of a lot. After all, Jesus is hot.
Usually when a westerner feels nostalgic to listen to “oldies”, they mean music from the 80s. When Arabs are tickled by whiffs from the past, they would travel in time and dig up songs from Andalusia from a previous millennium.
Dear The West,
A few months ago, I was scrolling down my Tumblr feed and came across a post of the pharaoh character in Night at The Museum, and someone commented: “Why is a white boy playing the role of a pharaoh?” And another replied, “Because that white boy is Egyptian, lmfao.”
That white boy is Rami Malik, winner of Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, which is Mr. Robot, the Golden Globe Award winner for Best Television Series, directed by another Egyptian talent, Sam Esmail.
Omar Sharif is another Egyptian/Arab talent who starred the classics, Laurence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. He spoke Arabic, English, Greek, French, Spanish and Italian fluently and acted them. He passed away July 2015.
Have you heard of Bassem Youssef, the Jon Stewart of Egypt? Bassem is a surgeon turned into comedian, who found the Egyptian politics rich with material that it would be a missed opportunity not to mock it. He became the most popular TV figure after he started off with short YouTube clips, an hour long show that turned into the prime reason for laughter in the Arab world, and finally a program where he nudges upon the American elections and world democracy. In 2013, he was named one of the most 100 influential people in the world by Time Magazine. He recently released a documentary on the 2011 Egyptian Revolution called Tickling Giants, which I was honored to subtitle into English and to actually get to meet Bassem in person.
I ran a personal survey by asking my circle of Western coworkers and friends here in New York, where I work and live, about who Arabs deem famous Arab celebrities and random common Arabic words, and the results were big fat zero knowledge. I ran the same survey on the same age and academic group but on the Arab curve of my circle about Western names and food and there wasn’t a single artist, dance or dish that wasn’t familiar to them. Everyone knew Michael Jackson, Rock & Roll, Pizza, Salsa, Mozart and opera. No westerner knew the meaning of la, ahlan, Halim, Adel Imam, mawwal, Kushari, Kabsa or kol khara.
When I say Westerner, I don’t mean the small percentage that are privileged enough to travel to the Mideast or work there. Those are a little more than half a million expats according to ExpatArrival.com survey, 83% of which work in the private sector. I’m talking about the majority that rely heavily for their source of information on the media - the TV worshippers.
And I say it’s a privilege for Westerners to work in the Middle East because they are paid triple the salaries locals get. Housing, schooling, health insurance and car gas are paid by their employers, plus they don’t pay taxes. Where on earth will you get that chance in the US or any European country? Exactly, Nowhere Land.
Dear The West,
There is more to Arabic cuisine than Tabouleh, stuffed vine leaves, shawarma, and kafta. Try the Egyptian mesaqa’a: layers of fried eggplant, between layers of spiced ground beef and tomato sauce. Either eaten with pita bread or by fork, if you’re on a fake diet. Or how about the savory Moroccan Harira soup, made with lentil, eggs, chickpeas, fava beans cooked with lamb or lamb broth. A warm hug on a winter night, and oh how cold is winter in the West. Have you heard of Shish Barak? Goodness, one of my favorite dishes made in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. In Iraq they call it Tatarbari. To cut a story short, it’s meat dumplings swimming in yogurt stew. Add to that the aromatic and arousing Arabic spices. Foodgasm! If I wanted to talk about dessert, I would end up gaining 5000 calories speaking about those items alone. To name a few, there is Kanafa, Umm Ali, Qatayef, Basboosa, Roz Bi Laban (rice pudding), also known as Mehalabiya in some Arab countries, Qamar Eddine, Halawet Jibin, Zunoud El Sett, Ghoraybah..okay enough! How can one live then leave this world without trying at least, one, okay three of those treats? How, ha? How!
Dear The West,
I’m an MFA student and every time I write a story inspired by Middle Eastern characters or events, there are Arabic names or words involved and provoked. The first and foremost comment I always get when my piece is being work-shopped is, “Write a footnote or a definition of this word between brackets because the reader is not familiar with its meaning.” Wha! Why is it my problem that the reader is not familiar with the meaning? Was I the one responsible for their education? Is it my duty to spoon-feed the reader my writing? What’s my job here exactly? Write or stuff my writings into the reader’s head? Paulo Freire in his book, Teachers as Cultural Workers, states: “When we read, we do not have the right to expect, let alone demand, what writers will perform their task, that of writing, and also ours, that of comprehending the text, by explaining every step of the way, through footnotes, what they meant by this or that statement. Their duty as writers is to simply and lightly write, making it easier for the reader to attain understanding but without doing the reader’s job.” So, I should not be put in a position where I have to provide ready-packed writing for an easy reading experience. As a writer, I should only write. As a reader, you should research to comprehend. I don’t recall coming across the words bar mitzvah, merci, voila or mariposa with an asterisk that explains their meaning. True, they have been too common to be defined, but why have they become common in the first place? Because they were excessively used that they have become part of the English diction per se. Well, if English speakers managed and are willing to welcome and comprehend those foreign terms, why not familiarize themselves with Arabic terms? It takes a small question typed on a Google search bar to get an answer. Not rocket science.
Going back to my MFA and other creative writing programs in the West, like Hunter’s in New York, UCLA in California, and Complutense University in Madrid, to name a few, there’s a huge cultural gap between the East and the West. All the texts and study materials we are required to read and study are by Western authors and poets. Not one course of the nine courses I took so far includes one Middle Eastern writer or poet. If a student wishes to study Arabic literature, they can register at one of the Middle Eastern Studies Programs that are limited to politics and freedom literature. None of those programs offer a decent blend of both cultures. Spoiler: names like Naguib Mahfouz, an Egyptian winner of Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988, Nizar Qabbani, a Syrian poet and publisher, Kahlil Gibran, a Lebanese-American artist, poet and writer, Mahmoud Darwish, a Palestinian poet and author, Rumi, a Persian poet, May Ziade, a Lebanese-Palestinian poet, essayist and translator, are all a drop in a wide ocean of Arabic literature the West is voluntarily ignorant of. Why do we never get to study any of their works, I fail to figure out.
Dear The West,
I’m usually stopped by Latinos in the subway, automatically conversing with me in Spanish, asking about directions. Cab drivers always assume I’m Indian or Pakistani because of my skin color and dark hair. Is brown the color of Latin American and South Asia, exclusively? I’m very proud of my brownness, in fact obsessed with it. I’m naturally tanned all year, a color sought by fake tanning that usually turns into Cheetos orange. But why is the world deliberately obscuring the fact that the majority of Middle Easterners are brown?
The West has successfully conspired in marginalizing the Middle East, limiting that region to terrorism and religious fanaticism. When it comes to bright brains and beauty, it’s always white or white related. If I want to discuss the reasons, it will take me another piece to tackle that in details, so I will wait until I’m PMSing to be in the right mood for that. This piece, however, is meant to shed some light on how the West is missing on a lot not integrating the Arabic culture into its intricate web. There’s more to the Middle East than what Fox News and CNN shows and would like the West to believe. It only takes one brave Westerner to get out of their comfort zone, open the rusty lid to the 4x4 box they’re stuck in to look at what the Mideast holds and could offer. The world is a melting pot, and The West doesn’t have the ladle to stir it.